Linda Ellison

The New Strategic Direction and Development of the School : Key Frameworks for School Improvement Planning

1. Introduction 2. Building a Futures Perspective 3. Strategy - Strategic Intent and Strategic Planning 4. Strategic analysis - Gathering and Interpreting the Information 5. Short-term action planning - Establishing a Framework 6. Primary Case study 7. Secondary Case study 8. LEA Case study Appendix: Proforma

Improving the Quality of Schools—ask the clients?

ABSTRACT How can schools measure quality or school effectiveness? Performance indicators such as Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs), the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and A level results provide a valuable perspective, as do truancy rates and other factors. This paper suggests that alternative measures of school effectiveness could be considered using total quality management (TQM) concepts such as client or customer satisfaction. The paper describes how two case study schools have gathered the first 3 years of research data on client satisfaction and used it to build a continuous cycle of school improvement as part of their school development planning process.

Organisational Learning: Building the Future of a School.

This article builds on an earlier one which we published in this journal, in which we proposed a new model for school planning. In proposing the new model, we recognised that it provided a framework for school planning but that it did not discuss the process of building a plan for the school’s future. Here we explain how the new model has developed and how we now propose to link it to important aspects of organisational learning such as the development of the school’s core purpose and values. This linkage, and the ongoing involvement of a range of stakeholders, should help to ensure that the school learns strategically so that plans are effective and there is no gap between strategy and implementation.

Invisible Labour: Home-School Relations and the Front Office.

When school front offices are mentioned in research on schools and their relations with the community, it is often to describe how parents/carers and the public are treated officiously and/or inappropriately. In professional development materials, schools are urged to improve communication, and occasionally directed to consider the practices of the front office staff. Yet when schools send out information to parents/carers, the school office is usually the place to which all queries are directed. However, there is almost no detailed research that looks at what actually happens in this place. In this paper we draw on a small‐scale commissioned research project which began to fill this gap. In seeking to reread our data and push further on analysis, we have come to realize that those who work in school front offices are women whose physical and emotional labour is not only rendered largely invisible in a wide range of literatures relating to home–school relations but is also inadequately recognized through recruitment practices, professional development and remuneration. We suggest that there needs to be further research into the high energy, multitasking, nurturing work that goes on in school front offices.

The Not-for-Profit Sector and School Improvement: The Students' Perceptions of the Change.

Kings College replaced a previous school on the same site and was the first privately managed state school in the UK, operating through a ten-year partnership between a not-for-profit company, 3Es Enterprises and Surrey County Council. This article examines the experience of this privatisation through the perspectives of students who had attended both the new college and the school from which it emerged. It examines the background to the new college and some of the key concepts in the literature regarding privatisation, school culture and student perceptions. It then reports on questionnaires and interviews carried out with Year 10 and 11 students. It concludes that there are significant factors, which, from the students’ perspectives, appear to have brought about improvement, particularly a change of culture and learning-focused leadership. Further investigation is needed in this school and in others that have been involved in various transformational programmes, in order to identify causal links between processes and outcomes.

Delegated School Finance in the English Education System: An Era of Radical Change

The English education system is going through an era of radical change which has been initiated by central government. A major thrust of this change focuses on local management of schools (LMS) – the extensive delegation of financial control to the school level. The effect of this is not just a financial one because it has a radical impact on the nature of schools and of the education system as a whole. This financial change has been paralleled by other changes such as the introduction of a national curriculum and open enrolment. Sets the major financial changes in context. Explains the structure of finance in the English education system and outlines central government′s increasing interest in delegated school finance (school site management), which culminated in the 1988 Education Reform Act. Finally, considers the significance at school level of the LMS legislation.

School Finance The School Management Development Plan

Financial system should facilitate not control